Would you like this in your collection?

[Alpaulo]

Awesome looking snake! Come along way from the pieds

[Bundu Boy]

Yup, breeders are now mixing everything with pieds to get all sorts of cool looking animals..... albino pieds, axanthic pieds, pastel pieds, spider pieds....

[Chip Cochran]

Wow someone would pay 18,000 for a snake, let alone a genetically inferior freak? Please show me who and I will sell them air (at a fair rate of course).

[Chip Cochran]

Actually the only thing more pointless than spending a bunch of money on a patternless morph of an animal that looks gorgeous naturally is shelling out a bunch of cash for something even more useless, like a scaleless snake, say a puff adder for instance.

[Bundu Boy]

Thanks for the comments there Chip... unfortunately reality is a bit different..... people ARE paying $18,000.00 for these snakes, there are even some that have been sold for $100,000.00....

I agree with your statement that balls are naturally gorgeous (well mine are at least lol), but NOT that the morphs are genetically inferior freaks. Genetically they are sound as a pedrigree pomeranian, stallion, or maine coon.

Once you delve deeper into the species and discover the versatility of the colour and pattern mutations you should be able to understand why these animals are bred. Firstly they are initially one of a kind animals which are coveted in collections, secondly being so rare they can command a very high price, I for one would prefer to breed and sell 1 animal for R50,000.00, then spend that money on importing 250 ranched hatchling from central africa which would deplenish the wild population and invariably be parasite infested... 99%of morphs out there have been captive bred.

[Strictly_Snakes]

Out of all of those, i would take that pewter genetic stripe... to be honest, I'm over the who hype of the panda ball, there was such a big thing made of it, for close to three months, that people were getting over seeing the thing... and to be even more honest, I'm slightly disappointed on how it looks, oh well ... but the genetics are still worth it

[Bundu Boy]

This is the good thing about these morphs, there is always something to be excited about....

Here are some more pics of ball I like

From NERD

From NERD


From Bundu Boy, just for Chip, my normal boy Samson... my first and favourite....

[Rob]

I cant begin to imagine how many generations of inbreeding it took to produce that Panda thing, I honestly feel sorry for him. So to answer your topic question...no thanks.

[Bundu Boy]

I cant begin to imagine how many generations of inbreeding it took to produce that Panda thing, I honestly feel sorry for him. So to answer your topic question...no thanks.

No sweat, at least you ain't being obnoxious about your decision, I would just be wary of using in-breeding as justification, read below....

In case anyone is wondering the Panda Pied is a Super Black Pastel Pied, which could come about by breeding a Black Pastel Het Pied x Black Pastel het Pied or a Pied Black Pastel x Pied Black Pastel, so not necessarily a ton of inbreeding is required to breed one, not that much at all in fact.
This is a designer morph that uses 2 separate morphs (Homozygous Black Pastel & Homozygous Pied) that exists in 2 separate snakes, the trick is to get these 2 traits into one snake. So the amount of inbreeding would be 1 generation.... Black Pastel (Co-Dom) bred to a Pied (Recessive) would produce some black pastels het pied, if you were lucky to get a male and female black pastel het pied in the clutch, then you would breed these together (1st in-breeding - brother x sister) which in theory could give you a Panda Pied.
Also if you have a big collection and have 2 unrelated black pastel and 2 unrelated pieds, then you could produce a Panda Pied with 0 inbreeding.....

This is according to my knowledge of genetics, if anything appears incorrect above then please let me know, and explain why.... thx

It's my opinion that in-breeding should only be done to prove out a trait, once proven then the breeder should out-breed to widen the gene pool of that particular trait....

[Mongoose]

To get a morph in the first place you need lots of inbreeding.

[steve]

Beautiful snakes regardless.

[BloodDragon]

I agree it's a spectacular morph.

[Bundu Boy]

To get a morph in the first place you need lots of inbreeding.

I would not quite agree with you on that Mongoose, well specifically the word 'lots'....

Almost all the base morphs we have are actually from wild specimens, so yes, albinos occur in the wild, axanthics occur in the wild, spiders, pastels etc.... The problem there is generally that their colour and patterns fail to camoflage them as well as the normals, hence predators get them quicker. The big breeders that started the whole ball python thing claim that they got a lot of their first morphs by going through shipments of wild imports and picking out the ones with unusual colour and patterns. We must remember that breeders cannot 'make' a new base morph, but only prove them out, and improve them by selective breeding (not necessarily in-breeding). Breeders will generally use in-breeding to prove out a gene, because the chances that a sibling has a particular gene as astronomically higher than if they used any other non-related ball, And as I said before, once the gene is proved out then they should be bred with non-related balls to deepen the gene pool. A lot of breeders are hesitant to inbreed for more than 2/3 generations because they want to keep the gene's of their animals strong.

To prove out a morph in-breeding is generally required, particularly for the recessive gene. Dominant, and co-dominant will need normals to prove them out, or same morph to make a super form which may include in-breeding. So while I do accept that in-breeding is required for morphs, I'm sure that lots of it may be up for debate. I unfortunately cannot quote anyone with regards to in-breeding stats etc....

This is my opinion on the matter.....

[Brendan E]

really thats all you got to add?
if you dont like the topic dont look at it. you are one of the very few that dosent want morphs probably because you could never afford any so dont knok the good work people are doing with the colours ok.

Wow someone would pay 18,000 for a snake, let alone a genetically inferior freak? Please show me who and I will sell them air (at a fair rate of course).

[arcadies]

99%of morphs out there have been captive bred.

no, they are mainly found in large imports.